Black winged stilts
A globally widespread wading bird, the black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus) is characterised by its extremely long, red legs, white stomach and, true to its name, jet-black wings.
Description: Its distinctive legs make up around 60 percent of its overall height, providing it with a feeding advantage over other waders in deeper waters. Young birds can be distinguished by a dash of dark.
Diet: The diet of the black-winged stilt is variable according to season, but typically comprises aquatic insects, molluscs, crustaceans, spiders, worms, tadpoles, small fish, fish eggs and seeds. With its long legs, it can wade into deeper water, where it may be seen snatching insects that hover over the water’s surface, dipping its head below the water to catch small fish, or pulling small worms from the mud.
Breeding: During breeding, parental investment is high from both male and female birds, with males devoting a significant amount of time to nest building and egg incubation (6). This parental team appears to be monogamous, as while the male stays behind to tend the nest, the foraging female remains faithful (6). The nest is either a depression in hard ground or arranged on a floating mass of vegetation, preferably situated with all-round visibility.
Habitat:The black-winged stilt can be found on the shores of large, inland water bodies and estuarine or coastal habitats. Its breeding habitat is typically freshwater or brackish (slightly salty) wetlands with a sand, mud or clay bed.
Behaviour: Northern populations of this species make long-distance migratory movements, travelling southwards to their wintering grounds between August and November and returning to their breeding areas between March and April (Hayman et al. 1986). In more temperate regions the species is sedentary or only locally dispersive however (del Hoyo et al. 1996). The species breeds solitarily or in loose colonies of 2-50 or occasionally up to several hundred pairs (Urban et al. 1986, del Hoyo et al. 1996). It is typically a gregarious species, occurring in small groups (Snow and Perrins 1998) (up to 15 individuals) (Urban et al. 1986, del Hoyo et al. 1996) or larger flocks of several hundred up to a thousand individuals on migration, during the winter (Urban et al. 1986, Snow and Perrins 1998) and at nightly roosts (Urban et al. 1986)
Status: The black-winged stilt is classified as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List
- Where you can find them in Zimbabwe: Lake Kariba
|
Kingdom |
Animalia |
| Phylum | Chordata |
| Class | Aves |
| Order | Charadriiformes |
| Family |
Recurvirostridae |
| Genus |
Himantopus |
SizeLength: 38 cm
Wingspan: 75 cm
Weight 180 g
